The Word-Smith Fallacy

Quick rant here…

When one hears an excuse enough times, especially one that is blatantly outrageous in its underlying con-text, it sometimes causes one to boil over with the urge to lash out and utterly destroy the character of the one using the excuse.

In this case, having just heard such a term used for the 100th time at least, I’d like instead to practice my repose and dissect the problem calmly and rationally.

It is often the case that people in their discourse and cognitive dissonance use the term “wordsmith” in a dualistic fashion to defend whatever disposition they find themselves in. This term is used as a single phrase that implies a two-fold meaning, one being the defensive notion that “I am not a wordsmith,” while at the same time offensively inferring that “only a wordsmith would say such things.” In other words, the use of this term singlehandedly stops the conversation and thus the furtherance of knowledge sharing, and at the same time belittles the speaker or writer by creating an ad hominem attack on the character of he who studies and attempts to use words correctly. Amazingly, this seems to be a very popular response when the Reality of things, specifically the artful and alternative legal and metaphorical meaning of words of art, is presented and verified by multiple sources.

And so I am creating an new logical fallacy here, by the name of “The Wordsmith fallacy,” though logic and reason are nowhere to be found in its use.

So let me be perfectly clear while at the same time venting a bit of repressed and pent up aggression when I say this:

IF YOU AREN’T A WORDSMITH THEN YOU ARE FUCKING ILLITERATE!!!

There. I said it. Feels surprisingly liberating, really.

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“Am I therefore become your enemy,
because I tell you the TRUTH?”

—Galatians 4:16, KJB

—=—

The synonyms of this term wordsmith are not many, those being “writer” and “author.”

–Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, online, 2015

Controlled by words…

The legislature is the author of law. The court administers that law and writes opinions. The president writes executive orders and presidential directives. The attorneys at bar write everything else, from procedure to rules of evidence to the over 100 Uniform Codes.

Oh, but they are just wordsmiths.

Sure asshole, and their skillful writings, being experts on the terms of art of the legal language just happened to enslave you and your illiterate family and their illiterate forefathers before them for generations.

Yeah, but they’re just wordsmiths!

Right dickweed, that’s the point. Because you are not. Because every contract you sign, every law you are bound in surety to follow, every flattering title you pretend, and every aspect of your life is controlled by their words. Yep, they smithed your person (status), they smithed your license, your social security card, and hell, they are even the smiths of the banking laws, which let’s face it, that number’s game is a whole other language most of us are also quite illiterate at.

Sure, but they are still just wordsmiths.

How fucking long can we play this game? How many times can you play this fallacy? How long can you “stick with stupid?”

Not ironically, there is already a word to describe this fallacious tool of idiocracy that has long been in existence, and of course each word leads to a connect-the-dots story to be told:

WORD-CATCHER – noun – One who CAVILS at words.

CAVIL – verb intransitive – 1.To raise captious and frivolous objections; to find fault without good reason; followed by at. It is better to reason than to cavil. 2.To advance futile objections, or to frame sophisms, for the sake of victory in an argument. –verb transitive – To receive or treat with objections. Wilt thou enjoy the good. Then cavil the conditions. – noun – False or frivolous objections; also, A FALLACIOUS KIND OF REASON, bearing some resemblance to truth, ADVANCED FOR THE SAKE OF VICTORY.

CAVILER – noun – One who CAVILS; one who is apt to raise captious objections; a captious disputant.

CAPTIOUS –adjective – 1.Disposed to find fault, or raise objections; APT TO CAVIL, as in popular language, it is said, apt to catch at; as a captious man. 2.Fitted to catch or ensnare; insidious; as a captious question. 3.Proceeding from a CAVILING DISPOSITION; as a captious objection or criticism.

SOPHISM –noun – [Latin sophisma.] A specious but fallacious argument; asubtilty in reasoning; an argument that is not supported by sound reasoning, or in which the inference is not justly deduced from the premises. When a false argument puts on the appearance of a true one, then it is properly called a sophism or fallacy.

–Webster’s 1828 Dictionary of the English Language

So, is it fair to say that using the term wordsmith to escape discourse and ensnare the conversation is but a captious, sophist method of fallacious rhetoric? Or am I being too damned word-smithery for you?

At this point I have figured out the whole game, how everything was stolen from us through attainder and escheat, and how the feudal system is alive and well through contract, for the words of the contract make the law.

Oh, but those are just words, right?

There I go again. Damn wordsmith.

Well, I leave you with this final thought. In overcoming my own arrogance in using the English language in the pointless rhetoric we are bombarded with everyday, I was presented with a piece of information that I could not have imagined to be true, and one I followed to its suprising end. It spawned a whole discourse on the legal language, in the form of my upcomming works, an encyclopedic journey through legalese. And nothing I have ever done has been more enlightening, revealing just how illiterate I was in using the language I learned in public schools; the one given to us to keep us dumb to the designs of those wordsmiths we complain so much about but never learn their art.

And so to be clear, here is what you think you know.

DOG-LATIN – The Latin of ILLITERATE PERSONS; Latin WORDS put together on the ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL SYSTEM.

–Black’s Law Dictionary, 4th Edition

You see, my fallaciously caviler detractors, a slave-master never teaches his slaves his mysteries, never revealing the artful law and its structure of words that entangles him in intangible chains. He keeps his slaves illiterate, spiritually and deductively, just as the priest-class has kept the multitude ignorant of its words for many centuries, so that the people may listen to the wordsmiths (priests) rather than read the Source and True meaning of their words.

The lawmakers will never teach the general population that which they seek to control them with, keeping their private language as their secretive terms of art, revealing them only under oath in private associations; conspiratorial combinations of men acting as agents (attorneys), as officers of the court (crown). And guess what, the translators of the Bible too will never re-smith it into anything but dog-Latin, so that despite the fact that there are more Bibles than people on this planet and that they are given away free and can be found available in every hotel room, these wordsmiths of the king ensured that you would never be able to read it’s words in their true intent. For they only teach us dog-Latin. They keep us all public-minded, through public-education, by the vulgar public language, while they privately control the “higher” one to ensure constant confusion. The Bible is written in the king’s language, legalese; as a mostly parabolic metaphor. And the legal fiction is opposed to dog-Latin.

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“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

—=—

And so, my illiterate compatriots, when you finally figure out that every word you say in dog-Latin carries the opposite meaning of the legal wordsmith in a black robe you are speaking to, perhaps then you will comprehend why you always loose in court. Why you can’t figure out how to exit their system based on their artful words. Why you can’t quite grasp how you are tricked into volunteering to be subject to them. And why you always turn away from perfectly good conversations simply because you can’t speak the language that sounds exactly like your own, public, dumbed down version.

The roots of language are
irrational and of a magical nature.”

—Jorge Luis Borges, Prologue to “El otro, el mismo.”

—=—

“Names are an important key to what a society values. Anthropologists recognize naming as one of the chief methods FOR IMPOSING ORDER ON PERCEPTION.”

—David S. Slawson

—=—

“There exists, for everyone, a sentence – a series of WORDS – that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of WORDS, that could heal you. If you’re lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.”

―Philip K. Dick, quoted from: ‘VALIS’

—=—

“…and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by CRAFT, and put him to death.”

—Mark 14:1, KJB

—=—

“In politics, nothing happens by accident.
If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

—President Franklin D. Roosevelt

—=—

“In doubtful cases, the presumption always is in behalf of the CROWN.”

“The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the FOLLIES, PREJUDICES, and FALSE OPINIONS he had CONTRACTED in the former.”

—Jonathan Swift, ‘Thoughts On Various Subjects, Moral & Diverting’

—=—

Cure yourself, or stand in painful prejudice and ignorance. But keep your fallacy and false opinions away from me! For your dis-ease is not medical, but contractual. And the only solution is end of contract. No really, the word solution in legalese means only one thing: end of contract.

paul

annspinwall4

Clint, excellent as always!! I think I might send the link to some friends in Texas. I am trying very hard to wake them the hell up..and it’s not easy when they won’t even open the links I have sent, won’t watch a video because it is probably “photo-shopped”…so many ignorant excuses.
Thank you!

athume

As with most rants, Clint Richardson’s written popping-off is only fitfully coherent, and is sprinkled with solecisms. For instance, in one paragraph a plural is written as a possessive (“…there are more Bible’s than people on this planet…) and then later the impersonal pronoun possessive is written with an apostrophe (“…you would never be able to read it’s words…). Richardson writes: “You see, my fallaciously caviler detractors…” The adverb “fallaciously” doesn’t function as a modifier to a noun (“caviler”), but would modify a verb, or gerund (“caviling”).

And this: “In overcoming my own arrogance in using the English language in the pointless rhetoric we are bombarded with everyday…” What is Richardson saying? That he engages in “the pointless rhetoric we are bombarded with everyday…”. Is that what he intends to say?
I doubt it. Also, “everyday” is an adjective, and in this construction doesn’t modify anything. The sense intended in that sentence is written ” every day”.

“The Bible is written in the king’s language, legalese; as a mostly parabolic metaphor.” First, is the Bible written in “legalese”? Any translation that I have read indicates just the opposite.
Second, anything “parabolic”, in the sense used here, is couched in metaphor, so “parabolic metaphor” is redundant. Third, the Bible, meaning the Judeo-Christian text, contains much that is not “parabolic”, e.g. Leviticus describes a lot of rules for the Israelite society, Kings and Chronicles are history (of a sort), the New Testament epistles are reflections on the meaning and direction of the nascent Christian movement, etc.

Not being well-versed in the use of language doesn’t make one “illiterate”, but, say, semiliterate, which was Fowler’s (Modern English Usage) term.

Just because this is a self-described rant doesn’t preclude proofreading for basic accuracy in usage and meaning.

Also, the videos from jwlpeace are tissues of inaccuracies and misleading assertions. They would be laughable, except that some people might think that they contain insights about what they presume to explain. The Information Age too often warps into the Misinformation Age.

Allow me to graciously correct your arrogantly incorrect corrections if I may, for what else can one do with trash but take it out to the curb where it belongs?

PARABOLIC, PARABOLICAL – adjective – Expressed by parable or allegorical representation; as parabolical instruction or description. 1. [From parabola.] Having the form of a parabola; as a parabolic curve. (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary of the English Language)

METAPHOR – noun – [Gr. to transfer, over, to carry.] A short similitude; a similitude reduced to a single word; or a word expressing similitude without the signs of comparison. Thus ‘that man is a fox, ‘ is a metaphor; but ‘that man is like a fox, ‘ is a similitude or comparison. So when I say, ‘the soldiers fought like lions, ‘ I use a similitude. In metaphor the similitude is contained in the name; a man is a fox, means, a man is as crafty as a fox. So we say, a man bridles his anger, that is, restrains it as a bridle restrains a horse. Beauty awakens love or tender passions; opposition fires courage. (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary of the English Language)

So a “parabolic metaphor” is a story about things similar but not the same to teach a moral. An adjective (parabolic) describing a noun (metaphor). What’s the issue? It could be a parabolic allegory or a parabolic aphorism (maxim of law), but as the word parable is the same word as psalm, the show fits. And for clarity, Webster explains: “…The distinction in scripture between a parable and an allegory is said to be that a parable is a supposed history, and an allegory a figurative description of real facts. An allegory is called a continued metaphor.”

But let us be clear here as well that a parable is not intrinsically or somehow always “couched” in metaphor, as you claim above. Funny stuff.

PARABLE – noun – [Latin parabilis.] Easily procured. [Not used.] [Latin parabola; Gr. to throw forward or against, to compare to or against; as in confero, collatum, to set together, or one thing with another.] A fable or allegorical relation or representation of something real in life or nature, from which a moral is drawn for instruction; such as the parable of the trees choosing a king, Judges 9:1; the parable of the poor man and his lamb, 2 Samuel 12:1; the parable of the ten virgins, Matthew 25:1. – verb transitive – To represent by fiction or fable. (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary of the English Language)

The man IS LIKE a fox is a metaphor.

The man IS a fox is a similitude or comparison.

I may use a similitude in a story, but I can tell a story in metaphor. If I tell it parabolically, I am explaining what is real metaphorically as what is not real for the purpose of moral teaching. A metaphor alone has no element about it that is descriptive of its intent, character, or reason for use. Thus by utilizing the adjective parabolic, we may know that the story is told for moral teaching, not merely to sound nice in a poem. When I say you are like a douchebag, I intend no moral teaching. But if I were to parabolically tell the story of how you came here fallaciously with the design to assassinate my character or grammatical skills without any apparent reason for doing so except the metaphorical douchebaggery aforementioned, then I might attempt to teach a moral objective that you might strive to achieve some purpose in your comments for the benefit of all instead of merely couching them in a pointless, incorrect, and quite rude syllogism.

You say that not being well-versed in the use of language doesn’t make one illiterate. This is laughable. Try telling that to a nurse or doctor about their terms of art. I can imagine you in surgery thinking you don’t need to know the names of all the instruments the doctor is going to call out for with haste. I remember not knowing the names of wines and liqueurs as a bar-back, and had to learn them to do my job. Had to learn the language of Pro-Tools and Final Cut Pro to be literate and thus proficient at them for my documentaries and my job. And not knowing the legal language that the law is written is certainly the cause of most of our social and political problems. Even Manly P. Hall agrees with that. Your comment is ludicrous.

You did catch me red-handed putting a possessive apostrophe on the word Bibles, a self-editing mistake to be sure. Oh, the crime. I should certainly be flogged, though in no way would the reasonable reader be confused by such a simple and obvious oversight. Drawing attention to it as an ad hominem on my character is sophomoric at best, sad at worst. Would be great if your notice was in the interest of causing me to correct the mistake instead of just they typical douchebaggery one comes to expect from trolls. I’ll be the bigger man and change that for the benefit of the reasonable readers though.

Hmm… what else?

Ah, this one especially fits you:

FALLACIOUSLY – adverb – In a fallacious manner; deceitfully; sophistical; with purpose or in a manner to deceive. We have seen how fallaciously the author has stated the cause. (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary of the English Language)

CAVILER – noun – One who cavils; one who is apt to raise captious objections; a captious disputant. (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary of the English Language)

DETRACTOR – noun – One who takes away or impairs the reputation of another injuriously; one who attempts to lessen the worth or honor of another.

Now I can’t see the difference between a cement building or a glass house (2 nouns) and a caviler detractor (2 nouns). Schizophrenics can have two personalities, after all. And you certainly fall into the shoes of someone who has attempted to fallaciously draw the attention away from the message and to the use of grammar in a captious way, and thus for reasons unknown are attempting to detract from the message by poisoning my well in no helpful or meaningful way. Just more douchebaggery.

As for the Bible being written in the King’s language, I will join to the copyright and that it is property of the crown. For the meanings of those words in their intent, I recommend my book, which you are likely not interested in since it is also self-edited and because the rules of grammar have you enslaved and cause you apparent malaise.

Now… if you have something to say about the message, not the messenger or his use of words, please feel free to comment with the view to helping others in this journey.